3rd Studio Session
DAY 1
And we're back... After a two week break from last session, Sylvie got the time to completely recuperate from her health problems and was hitting the studio with full force! As mentioned in the last report, this session was all about recording the vocals,... and there are a lot!! During this session, Jan S. Eckert was also coming to the studio to record his vocals, but due to his time schedule, we kept that for the last day of the session. After a brief warm-up, Sylvie took place behind the mic, here new home for the next 10 hours! It's surprising how fast and easily things go early in the day when you're still fresh. As the day progresses, things get heavier, you get more tired and it's harder to keep focussed... So it wasn't a bad idea to start off with the most complicated vocaltracks. It's really amazing what Sylvie's able to do with her voice these days, she took care of all the choirparts and really learned a lot since we started working together! It's definately not easy to sing every note the way you want it, it all depends on the mood, the day and the emotions being put in the music. I think we put most of Sylvie's vocal ranges to very good use and it really shows on all the songs! I (Yves) even sang some backings myself for the first time and I was surprised to hear that it all blended together quite nicely! :-) Ok, singing for 10 hours straight now, time to call it a day... DAY 2 Still a bit tired from the day before, we're heading back to Ace Studio to pick up where we left off! Because I wanted to redo some guitartracks, we decided that it was best to use that chance for Sylvie to take a break between songs. All in all, this day went very good & smoothly. I really learned a lot of new stuff by sitting in the studio while Sylvie's working :-) Well, the day's over, so now we're heading straight for the gasstation on the highway where we agreed to meet up with Jan. Surprisingly, finding eachother went extremely easy, so we headed back to our hometown and checked him into a very 'cosy' hotel :) (read: a place where nightmares are born) After check-in, the three of us head next door to have a late dinner with 'some' beers and take the time to chat a bit about everything and nothing. Well, let's not make it too late, Jan's been driving for 7 hours and the next day comes closer... Happy dreams Mr. Eckert! DAY 3 Final day of recording... I call Jan to make sure he's awake and we pick him up at the hotel where he's peacefully sipping his coffee. (the 2 crates of beer he brought are best saved for a few hours later) Gotta go, 30 minute drive to the studio and the road's packed with traffic. Upon getting there, we take some time to introduce Jan to our producer Frank and not much later, lame german and belgian jokes are being thrown around, so the atmosphere is good! ;) We still have a lot to do, and we decide to start with Jan's vocals. Let me just start off with saying that the man has an awesome voice, filled with great passion and power. the contrast with Sylvie's voice is just perfect! It didn't take him too long to record the perfect tracks and after hearing the results, we just wanted him on some other tracks, so he gladly kept singing. After the singing part, we took a small lunchbreak (Tomate Crevette!! (tomato with small shrimps for the english). ;-) We still needed to record 3 basstracks, since my bass got messed up during the first session, so Jan was nice enough to bring his bass to help us out! While we were arranging his arrival a few weeks before, we talked a bit about him doing some basstracks aswell, after all, he's one of my favourite bassplayers, so it would be an honor for us to have him as a guest bassist too! He had no problem doing that, and what's more, he played them flawlessly after hearing them only a few times! It was just a lot of fun recording all that stuff! When all this was done, it was really time to get back to Sylvie's tracks, since time does not stop! At this time, Jan has to leave us again and head back to Hamburg, so we all say our goodbye's and while Sylvie gets back to work, I make sure he's leaving the area in the right direction! :-) Back inside, Sylvie's already busy with some more leadparts. We quickly realize that time is not on our side today, so we already know we'll have to come back for a half day to finish up the last harmonies before we start mixing the whole thing. But that's not a big problem, we're already very happy that we were more or less able to stick to the original time schedule. Ofcourse you all know Heather Shockley will also be doing guestvocals on this album. Unfortunately, Heather was not able to make it to the studio but has a perfect homestudio of her own in Germany. So we sent her the tracks and she will return them with some of the most powerful female rockvoices out there today! :-) This report is getting too long, so we decided to tell you the rest through some footage we shot during this final session. Part 1 of the video should be online tonight or tomorrow. We should be able to start the mixing process within a few weeks, so more updates on that coming soon! Once again, we would like to thank Frank Van Bogaert, Jeroen Simons, Jan S. Eckert, Heather Shockley, Steve Vanderperren, Alex Vanhaesendonck, Jan Stevens, Luc Vandesande, Willy Berrevoets for all their efforts and contributions to this album! Without you, this would have been impossible!! We're almost there friends! Heavy Greets, Epsylon 2nd Studio Session
DAY 1
Finally, today it was time to enter the studio again! The past week wasn't really a pleasant one with Sylvie in the hospital and even now, a few days ago, her daughter in the hospital for appendicitis... But, When life throws shit at you, you have to pick it up and throw it back! Luckily, all is well with both of them! Anyway, early up again this morning to pack up to for the 2nd studio session for 'The Gift'. Today was a big day for us as we were anxious to hear Jeroen's drumtracks for the first time... All I can say is the drums really rock! They're exactly what we had in mind for the songs andhe really managed to give the drums a distinct feel of their own! (Thanks Jeroen,Willy, Steve, Alex, Jan for all the help!) We then started recording the first keys and orchestral arrangements on the first 3 tracks. Was a bit of getting used to at first since it's Yves' first appearance as keyplayer, but after a while, he got the hang of it :) (He should, he composed the damn thing!) :-) The rest of the day was spent recording Sylvie's first vocals on 5 tracks and it's all starting to take shape very well! We still have 2 days ahead of us during this session and we expect to have all keys and most of the vocals recorded by the end of it. We expected to have Jan (S. Eckert) with us this friday, but due to unforeseen circumstances our recording session with Jan had to be postponed till the 2nd day of the 3rd session, which will start on Sept. 23. Check the photos section for all new pics + some pics with Jeroen visiting us in the studio! DAY 2 'Nother day, 'nother full can of coffee!! No time to lose, we enter the studio and whilst saying hi to everyone we start up our gear and pull out our "very" detailed papers full of scribbled notes and annotations! Starting where we left off, it all seems to go a lot smoother than yesterday. We start the day recording the keys for the album ballad before moving on to the heavier stuff... (lets the coffee sink in a bit) After that, it's time for something faster, and with a lot of keyparts. When hearing Jeroen's drums on this, Yves starts to sweat a bit... this all needs to be timed correctly!! Lucky for him, the caffeine is kicking in... We decided to leave the vocals alone for today, since there was still a lot of keywork to be done along with some guitar adjustments. That leaves for tomorrow,... recording the keys for the last 3 tracks and then moving on to the definitive vocaltracks! DAY 3 Last day of this session. We started out doing some more vocals before moving on to the last keyparts. We also got a visit from Jeroen Simons and Willy Berrevoets (who recorded all Jeroen's drums at his studio) and got to know eachother a bit better! (He even tried to steal me guitarstuff!) :-) Anyway, after a bit of talking, we took a look at some of the pictures that were shot during the drumrecordings and we'll put some of them online later this week! Right, back to work... it was a close call, but we managed to record all keys during this session and the final 2 day-session will be in two weeks which will be fully spent on recording all vocals and choirs! Well, as said before, the album is really coming together now and we're overexcited thinking about the final result! 1st Studio Session
|
|